


silver and steel, shadow and flame

by potato_writes



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Past Relationship(s), Some Descriptions of Violence, Some references to alcoholism, sort of the apocalypse? sort of not?, they're still in love despite everything, this seems really weird but give it a chance I swear it's actually good
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:34:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27769129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/potato_writes/pseuds/potato_writes
Summary: Oberyn Martell finds him in a bar at the end of the world.*as their world dies, jaime and brienne make their way back to each other.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 14
Kudos: 42





	silver and steel, shadow and flame

**Author's Note:**

> apparently my niche in this fandom is extremely vague aus set around or during an apocalypse. this is the second one i've done now, which probably isn't that many, but it's still pretty weird that I've done two of them. this is also proof that I have no control over what I write anymore, but if you've read anything I've done then you already knew that.
> 
> originally this was going to be longer, but then I really liked the way it wrapped up, so you get this instead. the title is NOT pilfered from musical theatre for once. I came up with it all by meself, which is my grand achievement of this fic. also do heed the tags, there is some violence and blood described and it's implied that one character was an alcoholic at one point. all of this is as vague as the rest of the story, but I'm warning you jic.
> 
> thank you for reading, and enjoy!

Oberyn Martell finds him in a bar at the edge of the world, staring blearily into his fourth—fifth—he has no idea how many he’s had—drink and doing his best to ignore the pounding in his head. He’d hoped he could run away from it all, from the world and the war and the memories he can never truly hide away in the dark recesses of his mind. But Martell is determined, and Jaime lost the will to keep trying a long time ago.

“What do you want?” he demands, refusing to look up at the man standing over him, refusing to check for the disappointment that will surely be written all over his face. 

Oberyn doesn’t speak for a long moment, dragging out the silence until it eats away at Jaime, leaves him restless and fidgeting in his seat, unable to bear it any longer. “I want you to come with me,” the other man says at last, his tone level and even. “You were a warrior once, were you not? We have need of you if we are to succeed against those that would seek to destroy us.”

He surges to his feet, the glass skittering back across the counter and shattering on the ground, amber liquid spilling over his feet—his last good shoes— and splashing up onto the hems of his jeans. “No,” he hisses, his voice ragged and hoarse. “I don’t do that anymore.”

Oberyn just looks at him, long and level and so calm, calmer than he’s ever seen the man before. “That doesn’t matter. You were among the best, before. My forces cannot win without the very best aiding their cause.”

“You would ask me to go against my _family_.”

“I would ask you to do what is right for the world. Or did you forget that you killed a king to save a country once before?”

“I’m not that man anymore,” he snarls back, lips curling up from his teeth in an ugly grin. “I’m not the hero you’re looking for. You’ve mistaken me for Tarth, or Dayne, or one of the thousand others who can actually do what you’re asking. Don’t ask me to do this. I can’t. I _won’t_.”

“Dayne is already with us,” Oberyn replies, and for a moment there is something else in his gaze, a hint of the anger and mockery that Jaime remembers. “And he is not enough. We need you. The world needs you.”

 _You did not speak of Tarth,_ he thinks for a moment, with all the hysteria that once led him to kill a man. But no, he has no right to hear of her, to learn of her deeds in the years since they last parted. He gave that right up long ago, when he walked away without looking back.

Oberyn is still there, is still looking at him with burning eyes and something too close to pity on his face, and Jaime cannot stand it, has seen that look too many times in the years since—the years since—

“I’ll do it,” he blurts out, sudden and stumbling and not knowing why he’s agreed, because surely even he is not fool enough to throw his life away for such a foolish cause. But he is _tired_ , tired of running, of hiding, of turning away from everything and everyone because nothing will ever be enough to soothe the aching wound in his chest where his heart was ripped out of him and left bleeding on the floor. This might be the escape he needs, a distraction from the pain and the fear and the anger that still war within him, day after day after day.

At his words, Oberyn smiles, ice cold and burning hot all at once, and Jaime has all of a moment to regret what he has just done before the other man claps a hand on his shoulder and starts for the door without looking back.

***

They call for her at the crack of dawn, and she drags herself out of the hard narrow bed that’s the closest thing she has to comfort, trudges down the thousand steps of her tower home—in truth it’s six hundred thirty two, she’s counted—and goes to stand at the door while they do what they call _holding court_ and she calls _lording over all others_ —though not aloud, never where they can hear, and they can always hear. 

She will do this all day, and for half the night as well, and then they’ll dismiss her, send her back up the six hundred thirty two steps to her tower home—it’s a cell, they all know it is, but calling it that is akin to blasphemy when avoiding the word makes them seem merciful—and she will sleep for a few short hours before they summon her again, and the cycle begins anew.

In the old days, the days of knights and oaths and honour, before war after war tore this land to shreds and left the cruel and the hungry to fight over the scraps, this would have been considered great work, something for people to aspire to. But there is nothing great about standing by as they commit atrocity after atrocity in the name of their _cause_ , and she is as much a prisoner here as any of those locked in the dark and horrible cells dug deep into the earth. She did not choose this, after all. If she’d been given a choice, she would never have ended up here.

 _Would Catelyn be proud?_ she wonders some days, when all she can do is stand by and hope no one looks too closely at her for fear of them seeing the disgust in her eyes. _I kept my promise. I got her daughters out, and look what it cost me._

But Catelyn is dead, and her daughters have fled, and Brienne Tarth is the last one remaining, here at the heart of this terrible world where the heartless are rewarded and those who care are butchered and killed for daring to show such weakness as _mercy_.

She fits in quite well among them, since her own heart is long gone, stolen away by the man she never intended to give it to. It’s only fair that she took his heart in return, though she didn’t intend that either. 

There’s a great many things she didn’t intend, it seems, and yet they’ve happened anyways. She never thought she’d fall in love and then walk away from it, never thought she’d end up serving people she hates, even if it’s in order to protect others, never thought she’d end up another pawn in this game of war they play, moving back and forth across the board, uncaring of those who suffer or die in between. 

_I am better than this,_ she wants to scream on the worst days, the days when they say _come, Brienne, do this for us,_ and she cannot refuse for fear of who they will hurt as a result. _I am better than serving tyrants and keeping my head bowed whenever they turn their gazes in my direction._

But what can she do?

Freeing Catelyn’s daughters taught her a bitter truth: she is only one woman, and she alone cannot tear down this empire they have built. Now, all she can do is ensure no more are hurt, and even her best efforts are not enough on the days when their sadism cannot be halted by anything.

Perhaps…

No, no, she won’t go there. That path only leads to darkness and misery, and she left all that behind long ago.

So she stays, climbing up and down the six hundred thirty two steps, back and forth and back and forth in this vicious, terrible cycle with no end in sight and a beginning she can no longer truly recall, not when it has been going on for so long, not as time ticks by and nothing changes, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after dreadful year.

***

He snarls at Oberyn when the man and his daughters force the staff into his hand, and snarls again when they inspect and correct his posture with quick, sharp tongues, and growls so fiercely when they tell him to fight with it that the youngest one steps back for a brief moment, terrified of what he might do to her. But short a right hand, he no longer makes a very effective monster, and she sets her jaw and recovers quickly enough that no one save him appears to notice.

The staff is heavy and clumsy in his left hand, and he fumbles it frequently as the eldest of Oberyn’s daughters crosses weapons with him. When he had two hands, this was easy as breathing, the weapon an extension of his body as he danced across battlefields, laughing cold and cruel as his enemies fell before him. Now, he is useless, a fact only further proven when he’s on the ground with a staff at his neck mere minutes after the fight began.

Oberyn is not swayed, however, and neither are his daughters, so alike their father with their stubbornness and slowly burning fury. “Again,” he says to Jaime in a tone that brokers no argument, and so Jaime pulls himself back to his feet and resets his stance, ready to fight and fail and fall a second time.

_Again._

_Again._

_Again._

They don’t relent, not when he throws his staff aside and storms away, not when he rages with bitter fury at them when he’s caught by an easy blow, not when he falls down for the thousandth time and has to be dragged out of the mud, too exhausted to stand. And still, Oberyn watches, commanding he continue, _again, again, again._

By the time they let him go, he’s too weary to speak, too worn and tired to do anything but retreat to the barracks and collapse onto the bunk, asleep until morning comes and the youngest Sand girl shakes him awake and drags him back out for another day of being beaten into the dirt by children he once could have knocked aside without hesitation.

And so the cycle continues, day after day. They wake him in the early morning and spend the day fighting with him under the heat of the blazing sun, until they’ve deemed it enough for the day and send him back to sleep until the cycle begins anew. On and on it goes, until the days blur together and nothing is clear but Oberyn’s words, always the same every time.

_Again._

_Again._

_Again._

***

She normally spends her days outside the door, but when Cersei calls her in one afternoon— _come in, Brienne, let me show you something_ —she has no choice but to answer. It’s nothing new for her. She has no choice in most things, these days.

The golden daughter of a golden tyrant stands at the window, framed in sunlight as if she hopes the light will shroud the blackness of her heart. She glitters with gold and jewels, rich silks and fine gowns, all while her world starves and dies, all while the war rages, on and on and on, far away from the city walls. Brienne hates her with a passion she never thought was in her, hates her and her father as she has never hated anyone before.

“There is to be a new piece in the game,” Cersei tells her, smirking as her bro—as _he_ once did, long ago. “A greatly skilled player, long gone from the board but returning to it at long last. You will be his opponent.”

Brienne does not know what move the rebels have made to warrant this, nor why her captors are taking such vindictive pleasure from pitting her against whoever has taken up a leadership mantle among the rebels now. She does not want to do this, does not want to go hunting with the others—Clegane and Tarly and Hoat and all the rest—but what else can she do, trapped in this city of people who are too afraid to rise against the tyrants who sit atop their pile of gold?

“If you do not,” Cersei says, noticing her hesitation, “my brother dies, and I sent Clegane out to find the Stark girls.”

And that is it, because she cannot condemn others to suffer on her behalf, cannot let innocent people die when they are as much pawns in the game as herself. So she nods and bows her head all while the voice in her head is screaming _no, no, say no, don’t let them do this, don’t you dare walk away._ She is not strong enough to stand alone against their empire, and the rebels are too far away to help her now.

But as she returns to her post outside, standing tall and alone outside the door, a young man walks by, dark haired and sad eyed, shoulders curled in from years of ducking away from beatings, and he meets her gaze in a silent question, and she nods, once, twice, then a third time, and he smiles faint and distant before hurrying away, just another servant in a crowd of people. 

He is not the only line she has connecting her to the outside and the rebels, but he may be her favourite among them, for he is the youngest and the most afraid, yet he does what is best for the people of this world anyways, never faltering in the duty he has taken on. Someday, if they ever get out of here and away from the tyrants, she will tell him so.

She has less and less hope that day will ever come, these days. The rebels have been extraordinarily quiet as of late, and there are so many dead, so many gone…

 _Catelyn, Renly, Jaime,_ Jaime…

 _You know better than to do this,_ she scolds herself, forcing her thoughts away from the dead and the lost. There is too much else going on the world, too many other hurts. If she spends all her time dwelling on the things she cannot change, then how can she hope to fix those things she can?

The cycle continues, and the days march on, and she is caught in the middle, trudging up and down the six hundred thirty two steps, standing at doors she cannot hear through, watching and waiting and biding her time for the day when something happens, something changes, and she can be free of this monotony, this service to a cause she despises with every fiber of her being, and become _someone_ again, become _Brienne_ rather than the nameless soldier standing at the door with everything else stripped away by the tyrants who hold her prisoner.

***

The day he knocks down Obara Sand begins no differently than all the others.

He’s improving, he knows, has slowly been regaining his old skill with the constant drilling and Oberyn’s refusal to let him rest. He can hold his own against the youngest Sand—Sarella, he believes—for a good long time now, and he no longer spends half his days sprawled in the mud with one of the women standing over him, shaking her head before commanding, “Again.” He still returns to his bunk exhausted when evening comes, but he no longer lies awake at night so often, desperate for a drink to wipe away the memories and unbind him from the world for an hour or so.

There is no fanfare when he flicks her staff out of her hands, no celebration when he finds himself standing over the eldest Sand with his staff at her throat, the same position she has had him in a hundred times by now. She just nods, smiling with something that might almost be called fondness in her gaze, before rising to her feet and catching the staff one of her sisters tosses at her. Then she looks at him, meets his gaze and tilts her head to the side in a challenge he recognizes instantly by now.

“Again,” she says, and then they are fighting again, and that is the end of the matter.

Perhaps the first time was a fluke, but then it happens again. And again. And again. 

He still loses half the time—he will never be better than the Sand girls with the staff, just as they will never be better than him with the blade—but he no longer calls himself hopeless on those rare nights when he lies awake, and he no longer rages at himself or his trainers when he stumbles, or falls, or something goes wrong. Not that they ever indulged his fits when he had them, of course, but he thinks they might be relieved that he has stopped.

As the days continue to trickle past, something changes in him, a piece he hadn’t realized was broken mending itself and setting some part of his battered and weary soul to rights again. He has _hope_ now, strange as it seems, hope that he might do something, be of use again, hope that the rebels he now fights beside will end this war at long last. He still does not think of her, of her beautiful eyes and the gentle touch of her hand and the ferocity with which she wielded a weapon, but the constant pounding agony slowly fades to an ache, low and relentless and softer than it was previously. 

_I can recover from this, from having my heart stolen away and kept by a woman who must be dead by now. I can build a new life for myself out of the ashes of the old and move on, though I will not forget her. I cannot forget her._

And then Oberyn comes to him, shadows on his face and a silver blade in his hands, and he presses it into Jaime’s palm and looks up at him, haunted and bitter and sad.

“It is time,” the rebel leader tells him, so quiet and brittle that Jaime can hardly hear over the pounding in his chest and ears. “You must do what we brought you here for, or die in the attempt.”

“I’m not ready,” he says, because he is not, because no amount of training will ever make up for the fact that he only has one hand with which to fight.

Oberyn just smiles, distant and lonely, and Jaime’s chest aches again, with pity and recognition. “None of us are ready,” is all he says, shaking his head, before gripping Jaime’s sole hand and closing his fingers around the blade within it. “But we must do this anyways.”

There is no fanfare when he enters the war, either. But there is terror, and desperation, and death, all the bloody and terrible things that make up this nightmare tearing his homeland apart.

And all he can do is watch, and fight, raising his blade again and again in hopes that this next battle will be the last. But it never is. It can never be that simple.

***

She first hears of him in a former rebel enclave, one Clegane tore apart months ago when the tyrants first sent him out hunting. 

“There’s a man among the rebels,” the old woman says to Brienne over a shared stew, her wrinkled hands tightly gripping the spoon as if it’s a weapon. “Tall and golden and proud, with a silver blade at his hip and a single hand with which to wield it. No one knows who he is, or where he comes from, but the rebels have never had such a skilled bladesman among them before.”

For a moment her heart stops dead in her chest and leaps up to her throat. _Is it...could it be…_

But no, no, he is with his family, a prisoner hidden somewhere she cannot reach, or he is dead already, killed because she has been remiss in her duties—not killing this old woman is the least of her crimes against those who command her, though it is the most significant of them. And she learned her lesson about hope a long time ago. She will not be so foolish a second time.

She looks down at her own hands, and the steel blade at her side, and wonders if this man is why she’s been sent out to fight. There are none among her... _fellow fighters_ as skilled as she is with the blade, and if this man is as skilled as the old woman claims he is then she will be the only one capable of matching his ability. Which is a pity, because she would love to be able to sit and talk with him, to discuss weapons and techniques and learn from each other, as she did with _him_ , in the time before.

When she asks the old woman if she knows anymore, the response is not what she’d hoped for. “No, no one does except for whoever recruited him and the rebels he leads. Why’d you want to know, anyways? Aren’t you working for the other side?”

“I didn’t choose this,” she replies quietly, and the old woman reaches out to cover her hand with one of her own. “And if I leave...they will hurt people I care about. People who do not deserve to get hurt.”

“No one does,” the old woman tells her with a sad smile. “But you’ve saved a few here and there, and that counts for something. No one else on your side of this war would have bothered.”

Brienne leaves that town behind not long after, with the old woman’s words still ringing in her head. Is she an awful person, for staying with this cause against her better instincts and her own will? Will the fact that she did this to protect herself and others matter when it comes down to it, when the rebels come sweeping in and judge those who thought themselves above the rest of the world? Will it matter that she saved a few people here and there, so few among the many thousands that have perished while the two sides clash?

If _he_ was here and could see what she was doing, would he forgive her for it? Can she forgive _herself_ for doing this?

These are the questions she does not let herself think about for fear of learning the answer. They have all done terrible things in this war, and none of them are who they used to be. She is not the only one who feels they have been made into a monster by this cruel and broken world they live in, and she is not the only one who will be haunted by her actions when this ends, if it ever ends.

 _I must keep going,_ she thinks, steeling her shoulders and lifting her head high. _I will not let them cow me. I will not let them break me._

_I will not let them win._

***

He first hears of her long before he realizes the significance of the rumours.

Obara is talking about some terrible fighter she saw across the battlefield, a towering woman with a blade moving so fast and swift that no one could stand a chance against her, the first time the rumours reach his ears. But he is exhausted by this point, after three days of ferocious fighting ending in a stalemate and retreat on both sides, and so he merely nods and continues wiping down his blade until it’s shining silver in the dim light, as finely honed as the day Oberyn gave it to him.

When he realizes, it’s after another furious battle, when they reclaim an enclave they lost to the monster of a man they call the Mountain. An old woman sits on the steps of her house, grey eyes clear and calm as they fix on him, and he goes over to speak to her, one of the few survivors of the massacre that took place when they lost the enclave.

“The woman spared me,” she tells him when he sits down beside her, his hand resting on his knee. “The tall one, with kind eyes. She had a steel blade, and she asked about you when I mentioned the latest hero to join the rebel ranks. It was almost as if she knew who you were.”

He freezes, because no, _no, it can’t be true, she’s gone, long gone._ “What did she look like?” he rasps out, his voice as hoarse as it was the day Oberyn came and dragged him into the conflict, his hands shaking as they haven’t since those first weeks when he was forbidden to drink and drown his pain in liquor.

“Tall,” the old woman replies, studying him with a searching gaze. “Pale hair, freckled skin. Some might call her ugly, but I’ve lived too long to judge people on that sort of thing. And she was kind, sparing my life and bringing me food and never once letting the monster who led them kill without reason. She may have been on the wrong side of the war, but I don’t believe for a second that she wanted to be there, poor girl.”

“And her eyes,” he whispers, staring down at his hand and the stump where the other once was. “What were her eyes like?”

This time, the old woman pauses, and there’s something sharp in her tone when she asks, “Why do you care?”

“I think I know—knew her, once. A long time ago, before everything went to shit.”

“You loved her.”

He nods once, his entire body shaking as he buries his head in his arms. “I did. And I lost her.”

The old woman puts a gentle hand on his back as he sits beside her and shakes, finally mourning what he lost all those years ago during that final, fatal fight, when they both said things they couldn’t take back and walked away from each other for good—or so he’d thought. 

“There is still hope,” the old woman tells him after a long moment, her hand rubbing wide circles over his back, and for a moment he’s reminded of his mother, the distant and faint memory of a warm smile, of a soft touch, of another life when he was happy and wanted for nothing. “You have not fully lost her yet.”

 _How?_ he wants to demand, to yell up at the sky and the dreadful gods who tore them apart once already. _How can I dare to hope when doing so was what lost me her and my hand and brought me into this war?_

_How can I dare to hope when hope has betrayed me so many times already?_

***

She never sees him, but she knows he’s there.

The battlefields are vast and chaotic, and there’s no time to go searching for one man on the opposite side, not even a golden man with a silver blade, with fire in his eyes and laughter on the tip of his tongue. She does not even dare to want, to hope, not while the others loom over and around her, cold eyes and harsh laughter a constant reminder that there are still monsters in this world, masquerading as humans who make light of suffering and relish in the screams of those they harm. 

He’ll be killed, if they find out who he is, why she’s unable to stop thinking about him now that she suspects—but doesn’t know, they still claim they have him, and how is she to know what is truth and what is a lie anymore? So she sits silent in the camps as the others laugh and rant and spin tales about the atrocities they’ll commit tomorrow and all the days after, while she plots and plans, scrawls out hasty messages to warn nearby towns and sends the few she knows she can trust out to leave messages in hopes the rebels find them in time. It’s a quiet form of rebellion, but it’s all she can do.

It doesn’t stop her from looking, though, from scanning every field at the end of another clash, looking for a golden figure walking tall and proud among the rebel leaders. She thinks she sees him once—a flash of bright hair, a silver blade glinting in the faint sunlight—but if it is him, he’s gone before she can truly tell.

She should stop looking, stop getting her hopes up over rumour and the words of an old woman passing on stories she heard from a thousand other passing soldiers. But instead she stands on the hill, watching the rebel camp as they march forward or retreat to safety, praying to long-dead gods that the secret hope swelling and then dying in her heart is not false. 

The war goes on as she watches this all play out, the push and pull of the two forces crossing half the country and then crossing it back over again. Her fellow fighters rip up villages and farm fields, destroy the few crops people have managed to gather in the increasingly harsh conditions and laugh as they do. The rebels push and push and push, refusing to back down and refusing to die, and still she does not see the man with the silver blade.

Her dreams are haunted by Clegane smiling down at dismembered bodies, by Tarly laughing as parents and children are ripped apart while screaming for each other, by Hoat bringing a blade down again and again and again and blood spilling out onto the ground. She has nightmares of bloody streets and hollow corpses rising from the ground, surging at her and pulling her down with them while she screams and struggles until the rotting body of Catelyn Stark looms over her and pulls her into the earth, and her screams are silenced at last. Rarely, but worst of all, she sometimes dreams of the Stark girls, huddled in a corner while a monster of a man looms over them, of Renly lying in a pool of his own blood, of Jaime one-handed and chained while his sister and father stand over him with his blood dripping off their blades.

Those are the nights she wakes on the verge of screaming, though she bites her tongue bloody before the others can hear.

She knows it’s foolish, that the Stark girls are safe, locked up with their brothers in the far north where the war cannot touch them, that Renly and Catelyn are long dead and nothing she did could have saved them, that Jaime stopped being her concern the day they walked away from each other. But they are all she has left in the world—except her father, and she does not dare ask what may have befallen him—and she cannot help caring for them, even the two dead ones who were the first to try and protect her from the horrors this dying world makes them all endure.

And still, she looks, and hopes, and fears, no longer certain which outcome would be most ideal, which outcome would settle the seething pit of fear in her stomach and leave her peaceful, or as peaceful as she can ever be in a world tearing itself apart.

***

For a long time, he does not see her across the battlefields, long enough to convince him the old woman was wrong, or lying, that it was some other tall woman with unnaturally beautiful eyes. And then he sees her, standing on the hill after the battle, and he is falling to his knees before he has a chance to breathe.

She is the same as ever, still tall and broad and pale against the fading sunlight, with a steel blade—the one he gave her—sheathed at her side. Her face is wreathed in shadow, and he cannot see her eyes—he’ll regret that most, when night falls—but it’s _her_. She’s _there_. She’s _alive_.

He watches her for a long time, longer than is safe. His family has clad her in their colours, in red-and-gold-print uniform with dark black slashes on the sleeves. Her shoulders are slumped, more than he’s ever seen them be before, and he imagines her eyes would be impossibly sad should he be able to look into them now.

 _They are trying to ruin her,_ he thinks, his fury rising up and gathering in his chest, a hungry beast ready to attack. _She is too good to be forced to fight for their cause._

He will rant at the Sand sisters later, as they watch him with cool amusement while he hisses and spits and paces the floor, his rage and grief threatening to overwhelm them with their force. _How dare they. How_ dare _they take the best part of this world and twist her into something she is not. She should be fighting with us, cutting down our enemies as skillfully as she cuts us down now._ She _should be your hero, not me._

But she is across the battlefield, studying the rebel camp with eyes shrouded in shade, and for some reason they have chosen him to lead and fight and help end this war for good. He will not pretend to understand why, why Oberyn came to him and refused to relent until he did as they wanted, why they pressed a silver blade into his hands and told him to lead, to fight, to die if he must. And he will also not pretend that he is willing to sit by forever, to watch his father and sister tear open this world and steal its riches for themselves, all while the people slowly starve to death and the sun grows dim and cool except in the places where it becomes blazing white-hot and the war continues, raging thick and fierce and damning this world too some terrible fate as it slowly crumbles to pieces beneath the feet of the armies tearing each other to pieces.

He wonders, briefly, foolishly, if she’s looking for him. If she’s forgiven him the cruelties he spat at her during that fateful last argument, if she too longs for something familiar and right and _real_ in the face of all the monsters wearing human faces he’s seen fighting in this war. She has no reason to, though, and for all he knows she thinks him as dead as he thought her.

When he leaves at last, unable to stand being so close and yet so far at the same time, she is still there, still looking for whatever it is she cannot seem to find, and he thinks he can die happy now, knowing she is alive—maybe not happy, or safe, or cared for, but alive. All he wanted was to know, and now he does, and that is enough. That will have to be enough. He will not dare ask for anything more, not when the world is so likely to take what little he has gained away

Of course, it all goes to shit the next day. That’s how these things always seem to go.

***

Later, she’ll think she should have known when Tywin and Cersei arrived, their heads high and their eyes alight with malice. She definitely should have realized when they called her to their side and told her to _stay, guard us while we watch the fight_. It’s not like them to deign to come and see what the lowly fighters are doing—not unless there’s something they’re trying to get out of it—or someone.

But she doesn’t realize, not until they drag Jaime in and throw him to the ground in front of her, and the coals that have been slowly burning in her chest for almost four years now suddenly glow red hot at the sight of him before her, bloodied and bruised and as golden as ever, smiling arrogantly up at his family until his gaze catches on her and his eyes go wide.

“Brienne,” he breathes, soft and gentle before Hoat kicks him in the stomach and he doubles over, wheezing in pain, and all she can do is stand there, frozen, blood rushing in her ears and tears pooling in her eyes. He’s here. He’s _here_ , and they didn’t have him, they never had him—not until now.

She doesn’t dare look over and see how his father and sister react, and she’s heard nothing past her name spilling from Jaime’s lips, his eyes hopeful and afraid all at once, as if nothing terrible ever pulled them apart and sent them off to opposite ends of the world, and eventually opposite sides of the war. They’re speaking, they must be, but she does not hear a word they say, not for a long while.

And then Tywin says her name, and she straightens just in time to see Jaime’s face twist, fury burning in his eyes as he stares up at his father. “You will not touch her,” he hisses, cold and fierce as the lion on his family’s banner. “I will kill you if you try.”

“Very well, then,” Tywin replies, staring down the hard line of his nose with something so smug in his gaze that for a moment she trembles next to him, terrified of what he might do next. “It is fortunate that I have no intention of harming her, and that all I need is for her to kill _you_.”

The words don’t register for a long moment, in which Jaime has time to say, “Leave her out of this. Your quarrel is not with her,” in a voice so choked and despairing that she longs to run to him, to soothe the pained lines of his face and turn and rage at them, the tyrants who think they can win like this. And then the words sink in, and she understands. They mean to break her with this, and they will succeed, because she and Jaime may have been apart for years, but that does not—it does not mean—

“But you can end this war,” Tywin says, spreading his hands wide. “Kill my fool of a son, and we will surrender, let the rebels burn down all we have built. This will be vengeance enough, I think.”

His daughter does not agree, shaking her head and hissing in her father’s ear with fury burning in her green eyes, but his son’s shoulders slump, and he lowers his head, exposing the long line of his neck, waiting for her to—

“No,” Brienne breathes, taking a stumbling step backwards, her shaking hand clenched tight around the blade’s hilt, the blade _he_ gave her, the one he told her to _keep a hold of, I have no need of it anymore_ in an ice-cold voice before he’d turned and walked away. “No.”

“It’s okay, Brienne,” Jaime murmurs, lifting his head to meet her gaze with an impossibly sad smile. “You can do it. You can end this war. Don’t let me stop you.”

“I _can’t_ ,” she cries, her chest heaving, her shoulders wracked with sobs, her cheeks streaked with tears she didn’t realize were falling. “I can’t do this. Please, please, don’t make me do this.”

It’s the worst thing they’ve ever asked of her, worse than blindly following as the other soldiers destroy and burn and pillage while laughing at the devastation, worse than standing outside doors and climbing the six hundred thirty two steps day after day, worse than watching with burning eyes as Jaime walks away, his head low as if he thinks that’ll hide the pain on his face. And he’s asking her to _accept_ it, to kill him like there was never more between them, like he wasn’t once the person who knew her better than any other, and all for the sake of this _fucking war—_

“You have to,” he says, far too calm, like the still water of the lake they’d gone to once, the lake where she’d taught him to fish, where they’d watched the water for hours with no more than a handful of words passed between them. “If it ends this war, then it’s for the best. I’ve lived my life. My time is up. Kill me so that the rest of this world can live.”

She squeezes her eyes shut as Tywin and Cersei, finally in agreement, both begin to urge her forwards, as Jaime continues to reassure her in that calm, placid voice, too accepting of this fate, too willing to kneel before her and say _yes, this is the end, this is how I am going to die._ Do they truly expect she will be able to do this, to step forwards and raise her blade and—hurt him, this man she loved once, the man she maybe still loves, the man who showed her how it felt to be warm and safe and sheltered before they fought and she realized the world was falling apart, had been for a long long time without her realizing? Who do they think she is? Their perfect soldier, their puppet they can position at will? 

Her hand tightens around the hilt of her blade, and she opens her eyes and meets Jaime’s gaze, his eyes serene and accepting, telling her _it’s alright, you can do this, it won’t hurt me, I trust you._ For a moment, for a brief moment as they all shout and order and the world trembles around her, she allows herself to remember, to recall the curve of his smile in the early morning light, the soft roughness of his hands on her skin, his clever fingers running up and down her body, the weight of the steel blade when he’d first pressed it into her hands and curled her fingers around it, the same blade now resting on her hip, heavy and insistent, reminding her of her duty, of what she must do.

If he were not trying so hard to reassure her, to save what little of this world can still be saved, he’d be cruel, cracking jokes he doesn’t find all that funny. _Isn’t it fateful, that I’m to die by the same blade I gave to you, Brienne? Does it not seem right to you, that this shall be our final meeting?_ But he says none of this, only holds her gaze before nodding, once, and lowering his head, waiting, for her judgement, for the execution.

Something deep within her stirs, something she’d thought long dead after however many years of serving the tyrants now spurring her on again, and she nods, her tears vanishing as quickly as they arrived.

She takes a step forward, and she draws her blade.

**Author's Note:**

> no, brienne doesn't kill jaime. she doesn't kill Cersei or Tywin, either, but the war still ends on that battlefield. both jaime and brienne are fine, and they leave together, talk about the past, and decide to try again. originally it was going to end with something like that, but I like this version better.
> 
> the old woman doesn't die either, not for quite a few more years. she stays in the town and lives the rest of her life quite content and happy. since she played a fairly significant role here, I think she's earned it.


End file.
